Women’s sports are fighting an uphill battle against our social media algorithms | The Conversation

Women’s sport is more and more getting the attention it deserves.

Stadiums are filling, television ratings for many sports are climbing and athletes such as the Matildas’ Mary Fowler, triple Olympic gold medallist Jess Fox and star cricketer Ellyse Perry are becoming household names.

Despite this progress, an invisible threat looms, one that risks undoing years of advocacy and momentum.

That threat is the algorithm.

As more fans consume sport through digital platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and increasingly, AI-curated streaming services such as WSC Sports, the content they see is being selected not by editors but by artificial intelligence (AI).

Algorithms, trained to maximise engagement and profits, are deciding what appears in your feed, which video auto-p

But here is the problem: algorithms prioritise content that is already popular.

That usually means men’s sport.

This creates what researchers call an echo chamber effect, where users are shown more of what they already engage with and less of what they don’t.

Over time, content from women’s competitions risks being squeezed out, not because it is unworthy but because it has not yet achieved the same levels of engagement.

This is not a glitch, it is a structural flaw in how digital platforms are designed to serve content.

It means women’s sport, already underrepresented in traditional media, risks becoming all but invisible to many users in this AI-driven ecosystem.

Source: Women’s sports are fighting an uphill battle against our social media algorithms

Captured in Cyprus! Is this Underground Railroad Stop Now Defunct? | Women’s Coalition

A British mother, who escaped Family Court tyranny six years ago, has been captured in Northern Cyprus.

This is especially bad news, as the island of Cyprus has served as a welcome stop on the Underground Railroad for Mothers. Her arrest—and two others—may signal that it it is now a defunct depot.

Sarah was arrested April 7th and deported back to the UK last week. She is now languishing in a prison in Cheshire awaiting trial.

Cyprus has been such a popular destination for fleeing mothers that there is an attorney who specializes in these cases. Mine Atli helps mothers get amnesty, protective orders, and visas.

These women are being failed in their country. They need some kind of amnesty and there needs to be a path to safety for these women and their children.

It is unclear whether Sarah applied for amnesty or was just in hiding.

Law enforcement descended upon their place of refuge and arrested Sarah. They forcibly removed Tom from his mother’s arms. He was taken to the UK and placed into a care home. How traumatic that must be for him…

One reason Turkey has served as a safe haven for mothers is because it is not a signatory to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. That means the father cannot file a “Hague case” there to get his child returned.

A larger problem, as seen in Sarah’s case, seems to be extradition agreements between countries. Turkey can extradite a criminal to the UK if the crime is punishable by more than a year in prison. The sentence for parental abduction in the UK is up to seven years. But Sarah is not a convicted criminal. There is simply a warrant out for her arrest on abduction charges yet to be prosecuted.

It is highly unusual for TRNC to arrest and extradite mothers. They have previously had a policy of not cooperating with international law enforcement agencies in favor of women and children. And they rarely even extradite real criminals. So what’s happened?

Someone who’s lived there for decades commented that there seemed to be something “underhanded” at play in Sarah’s case.

Many criminals have managed to avoid extradition, so it really seems something more underhanded is at work here.

It may have been simple bribery or connections or powers-that-be cooperating.

Whatever the reason in Sarah’s case, it seems extradition is trumping the Hague process. It is much easier for men to get an arrest warrant and enter it into international databases than going through a long court process. And the frosting on the cake is the mother will surely be locked up for an extended period of time.

So, unfortunately, the TRNC stop on the underground railroad for mothers may now be defunct. The fact that men know this is a common destination means they can hire P.I.’s to scour the island looking for their property.

That leaves countries without extradition treaties as a better bet unless the mother is sure she can remain invisible in another country. Unfortunately, most of the non-extraditing countries are weak on human and women’s rights, but they may be preferable to children being abused.

How sad is it that women have to flee and have so few options when all they want to do is protect their children.

The modern underground for mothers escaping Family Court has its roots in an American network begun by Faye Yager in the mid-80’s. She heard about Karen’s case, in which the molesting father was given sole custody, despite medical proof of the abuse.

Needless to say, this ticked off the Old Boys. Faye was tenaciously stalked and prosecuted for child abduction. Fortunately, the jury saw through the prosecution’s duplicity and acquitted her.

However, the Old Boys were not done with Faye. They recently produced a high-dollar pseudo-documentary series, which they called “Children of the Underground”. They insinuated Faye was crazy for believing the children and had influenced them to report the abuse. They peddled their narrative—that it was all just a “satanic panic”.

This film has also served to coopt the term “Children of the Underground”. Google searches now bring up the pseudo-doc instead of Faye’s brilliant work and her being portrayed as hero. (There’s a word for this kind of sabotage but can’t think of it.) So they not only discredited her, they disappeared her.

Keep Faye’s memory alive!

Source: Captured in Cyprus! Is this Underground Railroad Stop Now Defunct?

Back to the Future! US Releases New Report on Treating Minors with Gender Dysphoria| FeministPost

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has released a new report on gender dysphoria care that, if implemented, will mark the end of the interventionist, affirmative model of WPATH, the controversial international organization dedicated to transgender health. . In more than 400 pages, the relationship – Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practice – takes an evidence-based approach and raises concerns about the safety and effectiveness of treatments such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery. Highlighting the scientific uncertainty and significant risks of pediatric medical transition, the report challenges two dogmas of child treatment: that a child’s sex is his or her self-perceived sex and that failure to transition leads to suicide. The document in fact proposes a more cautious approach in a non-ideological language and favors psychosocial interventions and in-depth psychological assessments, respecting the well-being of minors. In fact, it often cites the Cass report, the independent investigation commissioned by the English NHS and led by pediatrician Hilary Cass that has had a significant impact on health policies in the United Kingdom and on the international debate.

Over the last ten years, it is significantly increased the number of children and adolescents who identify as transgender or non-binary, often diagnosed with gender dysphoria. This report, commissioned by Executive Order 14187 of January 28, 2025, analyzes the scientific evidence and clinical practices related to the treatment of gender dysphoria in children, with a focus on the “gender-affirmative care” approach. This includes social, pharmacological (puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones), and surgical (such as mastectomies) interventions, considered by some to be “lifesaving” but increasingly controversial. The review does not provide clinical guidelines or policy recommendations, but offers accurate information for policymakers, clinicians, therapists, medical organizations, patients, and families, addressing evidence, clinical practices, risks, benefits, and ethics.

Source: Indietro tutta! Gli Usa pubblicano il nuovo rapporto sulla cura della disforia di genere dei minori | FeministPost

Special Rapporteur welcomes landmark UK judgment on sex-based protections | OHCHR

GENEVA  – The UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, welcomed the landmark judgment by the UK Supreme Court on 16 April 2025 in the case of For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers.

In its judgment, the Court determined that, for the purposes of the UK’s Equality Act 2010, ‘sex’ is binary, and must be understood as bearing its ordinary meaning as biological sex and that the terms ‘woman’ and ‘man’ are to be understood as referring to biological females and males respectively, Alsalem said.

The Court also ruled that the Scottish Government is acting unlawfully by treating men who identify as women and who hold a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) as women for the purposes of a law aimed at improving the inclusion of women on public boards, the expert noted.

“The judgment does not change the law but brings much-needed clarity, it also represents the triumph of reason and science in policy making and a return to basic truth and common sense,” Alsalem said.

“Most importantly, it vindicates thousands of defenders of women’s human rights, including lesbians, and their allies who have been vilified and attacked for asserting the biological reality of sex, the material definitions of ‘woman” and ‘female’, and the centrality of all these issues to their human rights and lived experience,” she said.

Alsalem called on all public and private institutions, including employers, healthcare providers, such as the National Health Service and other institutions, such as prisons, to uphold the ruling. She further urged regulators to provide necessary support and guidance to all segments of society to increase understanding of the implications of the ruling and the rights and responsibilities arising from it.

She expressed hope that other countries facing similar tensions between rights and/or claims based on sex and gender identity will reflect on the Court’s reasoning and draw useful parallels for their own legal and policy contexts.

Source: Special Rapporteur welcomes landmark UK judgment on sex-based protections | OHCHR

Family Court Ruling Ruptures Gender Ideology, Questions Anti-Conversion Therapy Laws | News Weekly

While Labor states are rolling out anti-conversion therapy laws to force health professionals and parents to support a gender-questioning child to transition to the opposite sex, a recent Family Court judgement has done just the opposite. It banned a gender incongruent child from receiving any further affirmation treatment.

The 58,000-word, re Devin judgement of Justice Andrew Strum, from the Federal Circuit and Family Court, brings into question the operation of such laws in Victoria, NSW, the ACT and Queensland.

Due to court orders, the names and the state of residence of those involved in the case are suppressed.

Justice Strum agreed with one expert witness who said it was “doubtful that puberty blockers may be best viewed as a ‘pause button’ … rather they may ‘lock in’ a child to ongoing gender dysphoria and progression to cross-sex hormones, by impeding the usual progress of sexual orientation and gender development”. The judge assessed the risk of puberty blockers as “unacceptable”.

Justice Strum expressed concern at the gender clinic’s single approach to treating gender dysphoria: “To affirm unreservedly those who present with concerns regarding their gender, brooking no questioning thereof … No alternative treatment options … other than prescription of puberty blockers.”

He ordered that the father take custody of Devin from the mother, and that unless there was agreement between the parents, the child was banned from attending the unnamed gender clinic, from puberty blockers and sex-change hormones being administered, and the parents banned from changing the boy’s name.

Justice Strum disputed a claim by the independent children’s lawyer that providing alternative treatments to the affirmation model would not breach Victoria’s Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act. The lawyer presented a letter from Victoria’s Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission saying it was “unlikely” that alternative treatments would be counted as an “illegal conversion practice” under the Victorian Act.

However, Judge Strum said it was clear that health practitioners refused to treat gender dysphoric children in Victoria because they feared prosecution. He noted how the father “had contacted very many (in fact, he said, “hundreds” of) therapists who were not interested in treating children with gender issues, because of” Victoria’s draconian legislation.

Three earlier child transitioning cases (re Jamie, re Kelvin, re Imogen) shifted the Family Court away from making decisions about children transitioning. Now Justice Strum’s comprehensive decision means that expected future child transitioning cases would have competing single-court views on the evidence, following Britain’s Cass Report, which challenges the Australian Standards of Care and Treatment Guidelines.

According to Stuart Lindsay, who presided in the Family Court from 2004 to 2014, Justice Strum’s judgement has paved the way for the Full Court of the Family Court to undo earlier cases.

Serial pest in sperm donor groups joins Clive Palmer’s colourful cast | SMH

A serial pest in sperm donation groups has joined the cast of bankrupts, fraudsters and fantasists in Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots and is running in the hotly contested western Sydney seat of Lindsay.

Joseph O’Connor claims in the biography posted on the party’s website that he brings “a wealth of experience in mental health and counselling” to his candidacy.

But this masthead can reveal that he has also presented himself as Dane McDuff, Blake McBeth, Adam Nilsson and Jack DeBevay in Facebook groups for women and couples looking for sperm donations, among a stream of identities that mushroom each time he is banned from a group.

Sperm donor groups generally do not allow members to use aliases.

Multiple women have complained to the group administrators that he has engaged in creepy behaviour, sent them unwanted imagery and is using the groups for sexual gratification.

Loading

The unwanted material included videos of himself on a porn site called “Chaturbate” where he uses the moniker JackPhallus.

In one of his early profiles, set up under the moniker Dane McDuff in 2019, he boasted of a “super high” sperm count.

Source: 12ft

Locked up for life? Unpacking South Australia’s new child sex crime laws | The Conversation

In South Australia, Premier Peter Malinauskas brought in tougher child sex offender laws earlier this week.

Under these new laws, serious child sex offenders are to be permanently locked up or electronically monitored, if they reoffend.

Automatic indefinite detention is a significant change.

Previously, the South Australian attorney-general could apply to the Supreme Court to request an offender be indefinitely detained, if the offender was considered to remain a danger to children and could not be rehabilitated.

The courts would then decide if they would grant the request, basing their decision on medical and other expert evidence.

The changes in SA mean those found guilty of a second serious sexual offence against anyone younger than 17 now receive automatic indefinite detention.

To be considered for release under the new law, an offender needs to show they can control their sexual instincts – so the onus is on them to prove they are not at risk of reoffending.

To achieve this, two court-selected psychologists would have to provide reports demonstrating the offender was both willing and able to resist committing further sex offences.

And if they are ever released, they will be electronically monitored for the rest of their lives.

In addition, registered child sex offenders would be banned from working with anyone under 18.

The new law also strengthens “Carly’s Law”, which focuses on reducing the sexual grooming of children online by adult predators.

The age of legal consent is 16 across Australia, except SA and Tasmania, where it is 17.

In 2024, an Australian Institute of Criminology report highlighted many of the inconsistencies across the country, including terminology and definitions of sexual offences, despite efforts to achieve national regularity.

Each state and territory approaches the problem of child sexual abuse differently.

[T]he legislation has been fast-tracked in the wake of a number of cases where those previously convicted of a sexual offence against a child reoffended.

One such case is Dylan Lloyd, who is alleged to have assaulted a 12-year-old girl while she travelled alone on a train. Lloyd had previously been convicted of assaulting a 10-year-old girl in 2021, and since then more alleged victims have come forward to police.

Cases such as Lloyd’s are preventable, as in this case Lloyd should still be imprisoned. This is one step forward. But consistency across states is needed and the long-term consequences need considering more fully.

[T]here are numerous human rights and constitutional issues with permanent detention or lifelong monitoring, and the SA government may be walking into a legal minefield now they have removed the possibility of parole.

Source: Locked up for life? Unpacking South Australia’s new child sex crime laws

How family law courts deal with disputes over gender affirming hormone therapy for children – ABC listen

Two recent court decisions could help shape the debate, and perhaps the law, on when children can be given puberty blockers and cross-sex hormone therapy.’

Two recent court decisions could help shape the debate, and perhaps the law, on when children can be given puberty blockers and cross-sex hormone therapy.

Guest: 

Minal Vohra, Senior Counsel, Holmes List Barristers

Source: How family law courts deal with disputes over gender affirming hormone therapy for children – ABC listen

How a law made to stop child abduction is being weaponised against mothers fleeing abuse | The Independent

As the Convention sets out, the conditions under which return may not be ordered when a child has been wrongfully removed are:1) If the other parent or carer did not have custody in the first place (or consented to the child being moved)

2) If the return would pose “grave risk” of harm to the child or put them in an “intolerable situation”

In practice, the bar for the second provision is incredibly high, usually amounting to a credible threat of suicide on the part of either mother or child.

I admired Lisa’s determination to fight the case and believed as much as she did that a return order would leave her in reasonable fear of her safety and the child’s. The Hague Convention was disadvantageous to someone in her situation, and while her experience of domestic abuse had clearly been profound, I had seen more severe cases where judges had still ordered the child to be returned. In one of my previous Hague Convention cases, I represented a mother whose daughter had made allegations of sexual abuse against her father. He, in turn, argued that the mother had coached her, and she was ordered by the judge to be returned to his custody.

The next day, we returned to hear the judgment. It was as I had feared: Lisa and her child would have to return to where they had fled from a few months earlier. As I confirmed it to them, we were standing outside the courtroom, in a foyer with barristers and their clients filing past, the noise of many conversations merging into a busy hum. In the seconds after her fate had been confirmed, Lisa put her back against the wall and slowly slid to the floor, her head between her knees. Her loud sobs and wheezing breaths rasped above the low murmur as she hyperventilated. This woman’s worst nightmare was now happening, spelled out in a court order. The law had deemed that she must be sent back into an environment where she felt she would face serious risk of harm.

This is the reality of the Hague Convention and how it has become weaponised against mothers like Lisa. A woman can demonstrate that she was abused, that her child witnessed it, and she is scared that there is nothing to protect her from that abuser if they are compelled to return. She can show that, after being returned, she will be economically reliant on that man. All that may still be disregarded simply because a legal framework that was drafted over 40 years ago encourages the court not to view the whole picture but to focus on one specific part of it.

Typically, I would never hear from or about a client like Lisa after we part ways. In Lisa’s case, this was punctured several months after the final hearing when I received a message from her mother. She painted a shocking picture of what had happened when Lisa complied with the return order. The father had not upheld either of his two most important undertakings – to drop both the criminal charges against her and his custody application. After arriving back in Australia, Lisa had been arrested and now found herself in legal hell in both family and criminal courts, as well as facing continued uncertainty over her immigration status. She now feared she would lose her child for good. Could I do anything to help? The short answer was no.

Source: How a law made to stop child abduction is being weaponised against mothers fleeing abuse | The Independent

UK’s first trans judge takes Government to ECHR over Supreme Court ruling | MSN

The UK’s first transgender judge is planning to take the Government to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling.

Victoria McCloud quit the profession last year after claiming she could no longer do the job without politicising the judiciary.

Earlier this month, Supreme Court judges ruled the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act referred to biological sex and not to acquired gender.

The 55-year-old now intends to use the European courts to have the ruling declared unlawful.

In a separate interview with the BBC, she (sic) said: “Trans people were wholly excluded from this court case. I applied to be heard, two of us did. We were refused.

“[The court] heard no material going to the question of the proportionality and the impact on trans people. It didn’t hear evidence from us. The Supreme Court failed in my view, adequately, to think about human rights points.”

She (sic) added: “Just as the Prime Minister didn’t know what a woman was, actually the Supreme Court doesn’t know, because they haven’t defined biological sex.”

Assuming Ms McCloud files her (sic) case against the Government in the next six months, the ECHR will proceed to look at whether it is “admissible”.

Ms McCloud transitioned in the 1990s, becoming the first transgender barrister and judge in the UK. She (sic) was the youngest person to become a King’s Bench Master of the High Court at the age of 40 in 2010.

In her (sic) resignation letter last year, she (sic) said the leaking of her formerly private transgender identity eight years ago “came at a cost because I became a public figure and a target”.

“More prosaically, for me, I am now political every time I choose where to pee. Less prosaically, the judiciary, by continuing to let me be a judge, is now at risk of being political.”

Source: UK’s first trans judge takes Government to ECHR over Supreme Court ruling